Why Every Local Business Should Have a Podcast with Marty McDonald

Intro: Welcome to Start Local, where we talk with business owners, leaders of nonprofits, and other members of our community focused on doing business in and around Chester County, Pennsylvania. Each episode will provide insight into the local business scene and tell you about opportunities to connect with and support businesses and nonprofits in your local area.

Erik Gudmundson: Hello, and welcome to Start Local, where we connect with local leaders to support local businesses and nonprofits in and around Chester County, Pennsylvania. I’m Erik Gudmundson, and I’m here today with my co-host Joe Casabona. Joe, how are you doing today? 

Joe Casabona: I’m doing great, Erik. How are you? 

Erik Gudmundson: Not too bad, not too bad. Today, we’re talking with Marty McDonald. He’s one of the owners of Bad Rhino. And Marty, welcome to the show. 

Marty McDonald: Hey, thanks for having me guys, Joe and Eric. Great to see you guys again. I know we’ve seen each other on a couple other podcasts and other events. So it’s always good to see you guys. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah, likewise. Fun fact for the listeners, both Eric and Marty were early guests on the,  we’ll say the first season, the first iteration of this show. So, glad to have you back. And yeah. So let’s dive right into the interview.

Bad Rhino is a, like a local digital marketing agency here. Can you tell us a little bit about who you help, like who you work with, and what you help them do?

Marty McDonald: Sure. So, way back when on the stone ages of the internet and social media, it feels like back in 2010, we launched Bad Rhino, Me and Rich DeMatteo. We’re based here in West Chester. Our first office was in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and we started out mainly in social media marketing from a management standpoint. Nobody knew what the heck to do with it. They just knew that they needed it. 

Fast forward 13 years and we still have companies that are like that as well, but we’ve helped many local companies. Everything from the restaurant up the street, all the way to large corporations like AstraZeneca and everything in between. 

We do have some national and global clients as well, but we do like to focus on the Philadelphia area and mainly in Chester County because we wanna help people where we are, where our offices are, where our employees are, and it’s really a big portion of what we try and do. Try and go to as many Chamber commerce events, sponsor events, sponsor nonprofits, sponsor local events in West Chester, where our office is. And that’s, you know, one of the big things that we do. 

And social media and digital marketing for small business is very, very important and extremely something that’s misunderstood by a small business owner. So we work at very various levels to help them not only understand it, you know, we spend a ton of time helping them just navigate through like, “Okay. I have my website. I have this. I have that.” Even if we’re not working with them, that’s one thing that when we started, Rich and I sat down and he said, “Well, what’s gonna be our focus to get the word out there?” I’m like, “We’re gonna do every little event that we possibly could and can.” Now, we have people that will do those events and go to those things. But we did that from the very beginning. And we still do that to help small business owners just because there’s a lot of, well, there’s a lot of garbage out there. (I usually use a couple different words, but I don’t know who’s listening to the show). But there’s a lot of garbage out there. And I’ve been doing it for 20 years, both as a hobby and a well-paying hobby, and then into our agency. And I always hated to hear if somebody got “ripped off” or “they felt they got ripped off”. And we wanna start with always really good information. And that’s really been the crux of Bad Rhino,  both large and small clients that we have. 

Erik Gudmundson: So Marty, you touched on a few key items that I wanted to get into in your brief explanation there. And 2010, Gosh! That feels like forever ago because we’re recording this here in 2023. And 13 years ago, digital marketing was nothing like it is today. So, In those 13 years, what would you say is the one biggest game changer that you’ve run across? Or the thing that’s caused the most misdirected expectations that you had to clear up? 

Marty McDonald: Mm-hmm. 

Erik Gudmundson: What’s the biggest change you’ve witnessed over those 13 years in digital media marketing? Because there’ve been so many, you have to pick one. 

Marty McDonald: Yeah. And you know, for me it’s been 20 years doing it since 2003 is when I really started doing it. In the last 13 years, you’re right, Erik. There’s tons of different things that pop up, that people are like, this is gonna be the next big thing that just doesn’t go anywhere, right. 

And what I’ve learned in marketing and how we’ve approached marketing from, whether it’s social, your website, email, SEO, et cetera, your messaging and your calls to action always have to be really good. That’s in newspapers, that’s in word of mouth, that’s, you know, forever. But the things that pop up are funny. You know, you have what threads right now, which is just Mark Zuckerberg just copying Twitter and people are all excited about it. Well, they’re excited about it for about 48 hours. 

So the cool thing I will say, versus 2010 to 2013, As these things get spun up, they have a spike, then they go away super fast. Whereas in 2010, 2013, 2014, even probably that’s about the line around 2014, they would come up, people would try them, they would get some sort of pop from ’em, something good. Then they would last for like 18, 24 months with like nothing really going on and they were propped up. Now, they kind of spin up and they kind of see where they’re gonna fizzle really quick. So that’s one positive. 

I think some of the big things like that I saw, which I knew was just gonna go away, is something like Clubhouse, right? Where you get people and they’re talking and they’re doing this. And I think it’s a really cool concept. And there was a lot of good stuff that came out from it, but it also is just like a bunch of people talking over everybody.

And then you also had a bunch of other stuff where it’s like, well, I gotta do this via Zoom. I gotta do this all the time, versus this and this and that. So when people consume content, and to your point, Erik, as you see these things, it’s like, here’s a new way to deliver the content. Well, if your content sucks or your messaging sucks, it doesn’t matter. So we always revert back to that. But it seems like every five minutes, it’s usually at the beginning of every year, it’s like, all right, here comes something new, and then something else comes, right midyear, and then from there it’s whether it’s gonna stick or not. So we always go back to make sure that fundamentals are right with a business before we go into the new gadget, so to speak.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. That’s super interesting. I happen to be (maybe I’ll eat these words) a big fan of threads right now. 

Marty McDonald: Oh, yeah.

Joe Casabona: And I was on like Blue Sky and Mastodon and they’re like, you know, they’re basically dead,  as far as engagement goes. But you know, it feels like nobody has a ”strategy for threads”, right. They’re just kinda feels very early Twitter days.

Marty McDonald: Yeah. And there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just that those things pop up and then people want to be like, well, we should be there. And it’s just like, well, yeah, you can claim your real estate, which I always recommend, like wherever you are, even if you’re not. This is just one tip I tell all small business owners, even if you don’t think that your business would be viable, say on Pinterest, right, for example, or Twitter, you should at least have a handle that you can log into that you can see what’s going on there in case something changes. Cause things do move, and we’ve seen various different things go whether it’s Twitter or Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, the list goes on and on. But you’re right, Joe, like there’s good stuff and the framework is there. It’s what they’re gonna do with the framework and…

Joe Casabona: Right.

Marty McDonald: You know, I’ve been around too long. I think sometimes when you see Mark Zuckerberg and how we built Bad Rhino was based off of Facebook going public and creating an ad platform, and you see what they want to do and threads doesn’t fit in what their longer term play is. So, I’m not, he’s just arguing with Elon who knows where it’s gonna go. But you’re right. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it. There’s, I know tons of people that are having great conversations and getting great engagement, but it’s also as a small business owner, need to be there. 

Joe Casabona: All right. Right. You’re spending a lot of time. You wanna spend it wisely. 

Now, I do have a question in this realm, but I wanna make sure, Erik, is there anything else you wanna touch on here before we move on to maybe your own real estate for content? 

Erik Gudmundson: Well, let me ask one question I think is gonna tie into exactly where you want to go, Joe.

As, you identify different trends, Marty, in terms of, you know, new features, new outlets for social media marketing coming up and going away, there’s this one of the things, one of the trends that’s been very active is smaller bites of content, smaller bite-sized content to be able to capture people’s attention and hold their attention long enough for you to get your message out. Yet at the same time, we see a big uptick in the number of podcasts that are happening now. So understand, you’ve cannon balled into the deep end of podcast, Marty. And so I wanna hear, what is your take on podcasts particularly as they fly in the face of that trend of everything getting short? Because podcasts are inherently longer. They have to hold people’s attention longer than a seven second soundbite. 

Marty McDonald: Yep. That’s a great question because we talk about it quite often. I personally think every business owner should have a podcast. 

All right. Now you’re saying the same thing, Erik. It’s like, well, what about smaller bites of content? Well, what we’re doing right now is creating content, correct? And then what you can take with that content is break it into whether I say something smart. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Erik says something smart or Joe says something smart. We’re gonna clip it up and make ourselves look good, right? So then that’s where your smaller content comes from. But the value in doing it with, you know, long form, same thing with long form copy. Same thing with longer emails, same thing with actually not only just using video, which is super important on the, like your website, but also having a section that’s very well written for SEO. But you’re not gonna sit there and read somebody, be like, “Erik, let me read you my SEO formatted blog posts here that I have on my website”, even though it has good information in it. It’s not BSS. It’s good stuff there. 

So when you say that, what I tell everybody is let’s create some long form content. And out of a 30 minute podcast, you can get, I would say, close to, you know, eight or nine really good pieces of content that you can clip up. Now you have eight or nine pieces. So if you do 10 podcasts, now you have 90 pieces, which is almost two years worth of content. If it’s evergreen that you can live on forever that’s pertinent to your business.

So, When you create it, you have to have an actual plan in mind, which is where Bad Rhino has come in for a lot of companies going. Okay. You got all this great content, now what the hell are you gonna do with it? Because you have three, four hour, you know, webinars, you have 12 hours of content, which is awesome because you’re a doctor or a lawyer or something else that has, you know, to get in depth with what you do. But now let’s take that and now let’s turn that into a whole calendar of events for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, shorts, et cetera, et cetera. 

So the value in the long form is actually having a plan, do the long form, and then have that clipped up so that you have those shorter ones that gets people’s attentions because I’ll also say on our YouTube videos for Bad Rhino as well as our podcast, what I find is when we push the short form out, next thing you know, our numbers go up on our podcast. 

Now, that might not be astronomical. It might be 10 listens or 10 more reviews. And the next thing you know, the phone rings or we get an email with a contact form filled out and it’s just like, “oh, I heard you on a podcast.” Which one? “I don’t know”. Right? Like, that’s all, that’s what they say. But you can take the clips. 

And the same thing with small business owners that guest on podcasts like what we’re doing today, you can do that. You know, it’s like if somebody asks me to be on a podcast, I’m almost like, sure because I can do that. Not only promote the podcast that (I’m sound like a commercial for Joe, actually now). 

Joe Casabona: That’s why I haven’t stopped you yet.

Marty McDonald: Yeah. So then, you know, having that and then taking that and utilizing other people’s content, but then repurposing it for my own where I’m not only promoting myself plus their podcast, it’s a win-win for everybody.

And you do have to create, you can’t create crap. I think Erik is what you’re kind of driving at with my long-winded answer in there. You can’t have 30 minutes of dribble and then expect it to work for you. You can’t also have just one tiny ten second snippet that someone goes, “Oh, I might wanna listen to that.” And then not deliver the goods once they get there, because they’re going to spend the time and then they’re just gonna be ticked off that they spent the time for 30 minutes listening to something that was garbage. So…

Joe Casabona: Yeah, I love that. And I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. ‘Cause like for the last year, I’ve put effort into short-form content that wasn’t derived from long-form content. And I say it’s almost like dumping a cup of water into a pool and telling people to go swimming, right? Like…

Marty McDonald: Yeah. It’s really hard to come up with short-form when you don’t have the long-form behind it. And I, you know, Joe, it’s like, when everyone says like, “Oh, I just wanna do all these like 32nd clips”. And I’m like, “Okay. Start. Tell me your 32nd clip and you have 10 of ’em. Okay, go. And you can’t do it. But I’m like, what if I interviewed you with 10 to 15 questions and you started talking about it, you answered them. And then the next thing you know, now you have 10 clips from those three minute answers that we can start to put out there.

Erik Gudmundson: And I think there is something that works just fundamentally well with that conversational approach where if you have two people or three people talking, interacting, you’re gonna get a whole bunch of nuggets of knowledge coming from that subject matter expert as opposed to just putting them on the spot and say, “Okay.Tell me the 10 book, you know, best things, you know, go or, you know, talk for 30 minutes about this topic where you see everyone’s eyes virtually glaze over. So, you know, finding that right mix of both seems really important. 

Marty McDonald: Absolutely correct. 

Joe Casabona: It’s like how when people say, “Oh, you’re a comedian, tell me a joke, right?” Like, I’m not on stage. This is not the right context. It doesn’t work, right?

Marty McDonald: Yeah.

Joe Casabona: Now you have started a locally focused podcast, right? The Bad Rhino Local Business Podcast.  

Marty McDonald: Yep. I think it was a local marketing or local business. One or the other. It doesn’t matter. Yeah. Just call it. Just search Bad Rhino podcast. You should find it. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Love it. Yeah. And we’ll be sure to link it in the show notes too over at [startlocal.co.]  what made you wanna start a local podcast specifically? 

Marty McDonald: What’s interesting is I wanted to do it probably before I met you in Orlando. And then I realized you were in Downingtown. And I’m like, well, I live in Downingtown and my office in West Chester, and I’m like, this dude’s in my backyard and seems to know what he’s talking about. And I couldn’t put two and two together. I’m like, I know this guy. And then back from when, you know Liam in the show during the pandemic, so, putting all that together, I wanted to do one for a long time. It’s more of time. Right. So I have a great guy on our team, Eric Stewart, who’s very personable, does great interviews. And he started a phishing podcast, which he’s got 40 episodes rolling now. 

Joe Casabona: Wow!

Marty McDonald: Yeah. He’s blown out 40 episodes really to kind of push out a bunch of content. He’s getting noticed a little bit, which is good. And then I was like on the heels of that, I’m like, why are you doing that? Let’s just get 10 episodes of a local podcast and then let’s see if we like doing it. And I actually turned into a piece of business already.

So, the interesting thing is, what I want to do in West Chester County in the greater Philadelphia area, “for lack of a better term” is just get involved in helping people by asking people of some questions, talking to ’em about their business, promoting it for them. You know, I’m not looking to get them all as clients, but if I can promote them a little bit, somebody else is gonna hear that and start to just really question what they’re doing. And that’s what we’ve been all about since we started. 

This is all we wanna do is, you know, as a marketing agency and marketers, you get kind of that. Well, what are we gonna do? How’s it gonna produce an ROI? And that’s what we always stand on, is producing an ROI. Whether it’s a big company or a small company and everybody has different goals. And I think the best way to do it is to get into that long form content to then break it into the smaller form content to promote ourselves. But more importantly, it’s just promote the great businesses and we have a decent email list and we have a bunch of different channels that we can push it out to and get it out there so that people can hear it and hopefully they get a piece of information and goes, maybe I should update my website because of what I heard here, and maybe I should look at paid advertising because I’m not doing any of it. My SEO’s dropping and we’re leads are slower, and so on and so forth. 

And if they get a few ideas, that’s great because what I see I’ve seen for 20 years, and it’ll probably go on forever, is small business. You know, we’ve all been there. You know, when you start something even if you have a multimillion dollar or even a hundred million dollar company, you started somewhere where you had to get your first sale, your second sale, your third sale, and some snowball faster than others.

But you’re sitting there as a small business and you’re just wondering like, all right, well, when’s the phone gonna ring? Or when’s the next, you know, client gonna come through the door or when’s,.you know, we are gonna be full in this restaurant, and so on and so forth. And they forget about marketing sometimes because you’re in the full blown hustle mode of keeping your business and the lights on. Right? I’m guilty of it. I’ve been there, and you forget to do the marketing piece. Like if people don’t find you, they’re not gonna, you know, they’re not gonna do it. 

So, the biggest thing with the podcast was just getting out locally, something that we really haven’t done in earnest in about, you know, pre pandemic, and I just wanted to reignite that. So we’ve been around for a while and we just wanted to kind of get out there and help people out by sharing good information. 

Erik Gudmundson: I think you’re doing a great job with it. But, I have a question to ask that I suspect you’ve run into.  

Marty McDonald: Sure.

Erik Gudmundson: You know, it’s really easy to polish, say a blog, for example, or if you have a subject matter expert and they’re a little rough around the edges, you can soften those edges if you’re editing their blog for them. But how do you make a person that’s really, really good at what they do, but they just don’t come across well in audio form over a podcast or in video form over YouTube or TikTok. How do you get them to look like the subject matter expert or sound like the subject matter expert that they truly are?

Marty McDonald: That’s a great question. And you know, it’s one of the reasons that when I jump on these, like I sometimes, it depends on, I’ll say this, it does depend on the podcast. But the one thing I always want to portray is that anybody can do it and people are gonna buy, they know they can trust you, right?

So if you’re really good on audio, and you’re better speaking but the camera and the stuff that we were just dealing with at the very beginning of this sometimes that you have to deal with and that freaks you out, then just worry about the audio.

If you’re really good in front of a camera or in person, then getting a set up. And that’s why I like working (Again, Joe. Here we go.) Working with Joe can help somebody get that set up because when I first do it, you don’t realize like, all right, what’s in your background now? Today I’m just at my home office, but normally if I’m in my office, I’ll have my background set up appropriately. I have the right lighting. It’s not just shining off my bald head. I have different things all set up. I have, you know, same microphones in both places. But you then start there. Okay. I’m comfortable with just audio. Let’s forget the video. Okay. Well, let’s just do audio clips and then you can very visually nowadays, especially using some AI tools, create some eye popping graphics very easily and somewhat inexpensively to then put the audio behind that, and then you have that person speak there.

But it goes back to the other question that you had, Erik is sometimes take like an engineer, like, “Okay. How do you build a bridge?” Oh, you’re just gonna put something between two points. Okay, well we know that part, right? But let’s get into it. We’re building a steel bridge that’s gonna carry X amount of traffic and they’re gonna go off because that’s what they wanna do. And it’s gonna be way over my head, way over most people’s head. But that’s what they do. So what you do is you wanna make sure that the content is structured, like we talked about before, to not only be broken out into small snippets, but then also you’re leading that person. So, if they’re not comfortable, get a co-host. Get a co-host, because it’ll help. The co-host is very good, already knows how to host. They can break it up. They can tell the guest to slow down. Stop. Let’s kind of redo this a little bit. And you need a producer there. And if you have that person there, it is relatively easy to make somebody look very, very good online. I mean, people do it all the time. 

The other way that I always recommend doing it is if you’re only doing audio. Then if you put it on YouTube, create some content that shows like clips of video of your projects, you know, or of your storefront. If we’re talking about like a small business, like get some stock footage of downtown West Chester. It’s out there. You can find it. Some of it is, you know, FREE. Some of it costs very little or have some custom shots, which will cost you a couple bucks, but you can find some people to do that. Create like an atmosphere that you can talk to until you get comfortable with that better presentation and that you don’t feel like you sound like a, you know, a fool when you talk because everybody’s been there, myself’s been there. You know, many times still, sometimes I get on, I’m like, what am I talking about? Right? So it’s creating that atmosphere for that person to then shine.

And then you do need, if you have that issue, Erik, like you said, they’re just not very good at it. I mean, I don’t know anybody in this world that was very good at it, day one. And I also know if I go back and I look at my videos from even 2020 and 2020, you know, to just last year, I’m like, “Oh my God!” like, what does that look like? What was I thinking? If I go back even further, I’m the same way. So everybody has that issue. What I find is the most people connect with the people that are real online. So, whoever you are, don’t be afraid to just let that show and you’ll find your audience will kind of gravitate towards that with the right marketing and the right promotion.

Erik Gudmundson: It sounds like what you’re really talking about is how to let people feel comfortable being their authentic selves because… 

Marty McDonald: Correct.

Erik Gudmundson: Authenticity is such a key factor in marketing. Am I hearing you correctly? 

Marty McDonald: Yep, yep. There’s plenty of crap out there. I mean, that’s easy to find and people gravitate towards people that are just saying real things more so than anything.

Erik Gudmundson: Sometimes they’re not factual, real things, and what I mean by that is they just feel like they have authority and those people are just polished, kind of snake oil, salesman, but other ones that are just being real like, “Hey, I have this great cafe and it’s here in West Chester and I’m doing this.” People like that. And then the business owner’s always shocked when somebody comes by and is like, “Hey, I saw your video on Instagram. This place is cool.” And they’re like, “Oh my God! it worked.” It’s like, yeah, it works. it actually works. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Absolutely. I think one of some of the things, I mean, Marty, you came on. We knew that, you know, you’re ready to go. You’re really good at this. Something that I like to do is do a little bit of a pre-interview, warm them up a little bit. I’ve had people ask me recently though, like, “Hey, we’ve had some duds. What do I do?” And I’m like, if what they said was good, just pull those clips out and kind of make a narrative around that. Right. Make you do the heavy lifting and use what they’ve said to support kind of what you’re saying. 

Marty McDonald: Yeah. Having hosted, what this is, well, I’m not really hosting the phishing one, but advising Stew on there, I was like, I always have your standard 12 to 15 questions, but you don’t have to read ’em like a script. Figure out the two or three that you absolutely wanted answered, but have it start as a conversation. If you get stuck, go back to the script. Or if the person is done, like you said, Joe, start to get that so you get the sound bites out of it that you want for your content, but also to promote them too. 

I mean, they’re taking the time to come on the show, right? Then you want to pay that back. And pay it forward, so to speak, as well, by promoting them and their business for taking the time to do so. So always have something prepared. 

Every podcast I’ve ever been on just about, I’ve always spent like, all right, 10-15 minutes just thinking about like, at least that I’ve done probably about 250 some odd interviews over the years. So like, I kind of know, all right, what’s gonna go? And I’m better if I’m not prepared. I know that. But I also wanna know, like, all right. What’s the slant here? So I can at least start thinking about that.

And the prep work is most important. And like you said, Joe, the pre-interview,  getting somebody in there and Erik, that’s the same thing I was talking about before. That helps somebody that maybe is uncomfortable whether they’re doing their own show or they’re on somebody else’s show. If you tell ’em like, all right. Send them the questions in advance so that they know what’s coming. Talk to them a little bit. If it’s an easy conversation, you’re just gonna say, “Hey, we’re gonna let this flow for like 25-40 minutes. It’s probably gonna cut down to 30.” And let them know the process. And it usually opens up, you know, and like Joe said, make sure you know what you wanna get out of it. And get that out of it, and go from there. 

Erik Gudmundson: It sounds like you do an awful lot of prep work, Marty. So I have to ask, is it easier for you to be the host or is it easier for you to be the guest?

Marty McDonald: It’s easier for me to be the guest. I’m actually jumping in, and doing, I have about 150 people I’m about to email it. Well, I’ve had 150 people I’m about to email for about three months to launch a different podcast, and I haven’t done it yet. Just because I know hosting is like, okay, you gotta set this time across and do all this.

For me, being a guest, I just got an email. I was so excited ’cause I got an email. Two emails, one last week and one just about 20 minutes before we jumped on here and I was excited. I was like, “sweet”, I’ll go on. There’s podcast. There’s two more pieces of content. So like, I think of it in terms of not what that podcast is gonna do, but how easy is it gonna be for me to produce the most cost effective way to get the content out the door.

So to long-winded again, to answer your question, I’d rather guest on as many podcasts as humanly possible. 

Erik Gudmundson: So I have a follow-up question on that. What’s the number one piece of advice that you would give someone who has been booked to be a guest on a podcast or wants to be a guest on a podcast so that they can be a dynamite guest?

Marty McDonald: One, I think we covered it was just preparation and understanding what the show’s about. Make sure you go and you listen to one or two of the shows. You don’t have to listen to them all, but get a feel for the flow. Get a feel for the idea of the show. Research the host a little bit so that if something comes up, I can be like, “Joe, you still live in Downingtown. How are your kids?” You know, I saw this on, you know, so you can have a conversation. Just think of it, almost treat it like a sales call where you’re going in and you’re pitching your own business, but you’re just going in interview and it’d be like, “Erik, how’s everything going? What’s going on with your company?” But being able to have like very specific spots that you could jump in and carry some of that conversation as a guest.As a host, the big thing is being prepared and knowing your guests so that if those lulls happen, you can do the same exact thing. 

And then on the flip side of that is also know what you want to get out. So if there’s something that you want to drop out there, like we already covered it, it was the local podcast for the theme of this show that we have, then you wanna make sure you bring that up. And if the host isn’t doing it and you’re the guest, drop it in there and be like, “Hey, is there anything else you want to bring?” And it got all the way down to, you know, the end of the show and you’re like, “Yeah. You know, let’s talk about my podcast really quick.” We just wanna let you know, you know, and you go into that, but you’re prepared for that. And you bring something to the table because when I did some guest appearances on certain shows, they turned into multiple shows and they’ve actually turned into business relatively quickly. 

And also go into it. Ready to go. Don’t just be ready, like when it starts, you know, there’s always a little bit of a lull, you know, so if it’s a half hour section off an hour, turn off all your stuff, make sure you’re ready to actually interact with people and do things like that. 

Again, I’m an advertisement for Joe right now. Again, it’s talking about podcasting.

Joe Casabona: This is really working out great for me, but I mean, I’m sure it’s, you’re absolutely right. Right? Because like you said, you know, as a guest or a host, you know, you can get people to know, like, and trust you. And if you provide that value, you don’t have to necessarily just pitch, pitch, pitch, right? You talk about your expertise and people will be interested. You know, I’ve gone on podcasts and I’ve gotten clients like directly from those appearances, like email me right after. So, and I wasn’t pitching anything. People do, “Oh wow!. This guy runs three podcasts and has three kids.” Like how I want. How des he do that?

Marty McDonald: Like how does he do that? Yeah. We hear the same thing like the one thing I like about podcasts, even if it as long as they have a audience, it doesn’t have to be huge. But if they know their audience, ’cause that’s one question I always ask, like, all right, who is the audience here so that you can drop certain things.

I’ve done a lot of stuff in craft beard, a lot of stuff in golf, a lot of stuff in craft spirits over the years. And I would just be like, well, who’s your audience? Well, we only deal with winemakers, mainly in the Pacific Northwest, and I’ll be like, okay. So I’ll go look at the biggest wineries in the Pacific Northwest and biggest beer brands or whatever the situation is, and I’ll make sure I have a list of those and be like, well, yeah, you know, X, y, Z just had a long, you know about them. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah.

Marty McDonald: You know, it’s just something I was looking up and getting ready for the podcast and I thought it was really interesting the way they’re,  whatever it is. And having that knowledge and that little bit, because when they have that audience, And you can resonate with them, it’s a big deal. And those people do remember it and they’re like, thanks for having that guest on. He really talked really well about marketing. I actually gave him a call and it’s just like, “That’s awesome”. 

Joe Casabona: That’s so great. Now as we are winding down on time here, I think probably the biggest takeaway right now for listeners is, if you want to get out there, there are podcasts in your niche where you can pitch them, let them know what you can do for their audience. This is what the hosts wanna know the most.  

Marty McDonald: Correct.

Joe Casabona: And do what Marty said. Provide value. Do a little bit of research. 

Bringing it back to the local stuff, I know that often people are looking for job opportunities, and that’s something that we like to elevate on this show. So are there, I mean, are there any job opportunities with Bad Rhino or do you know of any in the digital marketing, marketing space in general?

Marty McDonald: So, as far as I know, well right now there’s nothing at the moment that could change by the time this comes out. But we’re sitting here in, you know, towards the middle of July that could change by the time this comes out. But you can just go to our website and you can see everything that we have in terms of opportunities. So right now nothing that’s imminent, but that’s probably gonna change very soon. 

As far as that, like, I don’t know of any agency at the moment that is not looking for people. So like, if you’re looking in that work realm and you have a skillset and you want a new, you know, looking for a new opportunity, there’s plenty out there.

But I also know,  it’s a little bit different right now because people are getting inundated on certain jobs by like people that are have, you know, no qualifications or they’re just looking for information type of thing. 

So my biggest advice being a former recruiter, which feels like more than many, many moons ago, Is research the company and reach out to the people directly with something that’s well thought out and written. 

Seems to be cutting through a lot of noise right now in 2023 of people that are looking for opportunity. So, you know, network and do kind of an “old school” not saying go and actually shake hands. Just do it online and you’ll find those opportunities are pretty there, are pretty good there. 

I think the other side of it is with everybody is looking for, it doesn’t matter what industry is looking for. People right now they’re just looking a little bit differently than they used to. And they all need people.  They’re just looking for the right things and there’s just a lot of X factors that are out there. It’s like, need somebody to come in the office, you know, at least once or twice a week, and we’re still work from home, but there’s other things that are involved. So there’s a lot of nuances to it, and that’s what I mean by do your research, talk to the people that are making decisions and see if you can get their attention rather than just, you know, firing out a bunch of emails without doing any  research and things like that. You’ll wind up getting a call, but I don’t know of too many business owners right now that aren’t looking for people in one way, shape, or form. 

Joe Casabona: You know what I’ve noticed, and maybe you can confirm, or this is more anecdotal, but it feels like a lot of people I know have been told, “Oh yeah. Email us with your skillset and we’ll see if we can find something for you.” It’s almost like a non job description, job description.

Marty McDonald: Yeah. I didn’t really wanna say it that way, but No. You’re a hundred percent correct, Joe. What it is, is like they’ll have an opening and they’re looking for the right person and the right mindset more so than the skillset. So they’re saying, “Okay. You have this skills. Would you be willing to learn these following things?” You know? And we have an opportunity that we’d like to talk to you about. And here’s the actual job description. 

And the reason is, is like everything’s a little fluid right now, probably more so than I ever, ever remember where it’s like if we can find somebody that has these three things, we can actually tailor this other stuff that we need to get done around those three things because these three things are big, but it’s not classified as like an account executive or an SEO expert or whatever. There’s certain pieces that are kind of all over the place right now and it’s just change more so than anything. 

So, Joe, that’s a great thing. I didn’t really wanna say it that way because I’m trying to explain it might’ve been a little bit more difficult for me, but you put it very succinctly. And you’re right, like, send me your skillset. We have a couple of different opportunities. We’re not quite sure what it is. So what, I was saying like with networking is if you know a company that you wanna work for, you know, reach out and try and get their attention. And you might be shocked what you find in a good way. 

Erik Gudmundson: And companies at the end of the day, they’re really these days looking for retention. Not so much…

Marty McDonald: Yeah. 

Erik Gudmundson: Who hires, because retention is the hard part. It’s easy to train on technical skills or operational skills. It’s hard to train on cultural fit.

Marty McDonald: A hundred percent. And that’s the one main thing that I see is like, all right, are you gonna fit here for a longer term? And you know, what’s longer term? You know, I mean most people stay at a job, you know, at most two to three years is like a long time in some cases. But there’s also the reality of it where people are looking from a business owner perspective and saying, what’s the best chance that you’re here post those two or three years ’cause I’m gonna invest quite a bit of money in your training and things like that. And we want you to be comfortable there. Like they don’t wanna force it just because you’re X, y, z guru at whatever it is, and we’re gonna bring you on, but you’re unhappy. Like that’s defeats the purpose. Like want, you know, it’s like people think, like so many people think from an employment side that employers want people that they can just milk the daylights out of. And that’s not true. That’s just not a good company. Are there places out there like that? Sure. But that’s not, you know, what the majority of good businesses wanna do. They want people to be happy, wanna have fun, wanna be able to hang out, whether it’s virtual or in person. And they want people to be happy in the job ’cause that helps everybody around it in the environment. So, you know, I think that’s a great thing is that culture thing. Erik, is huge. 

Joe Casabona: Awesome. That’s great. Well, let’s wrap up here. Marty, thanks so much for your time. If people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?

Marty McDonald:  Very simply is [badrhinoinc.com]. You can get everything there. The podcast is up on there. If you wanna learn a little bit more, just Bad Rhino Inc. On our YouTube’s got a ton of great information and videos that actually go back 10 plus years. So you can check that out for information. And we’ve already mentioned the podcast and everything, but it’s all right there on [badrhinoinc.com]. And like I said, we’re right here in West Chester. 

Joe Casabona: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us. Eric and I and the rest of the Start local team. 

Thank you for listening. 

And until next time. We’ll see you out there.